


Distracted

by Beth Harker (Beth_Harker)



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon, includes a detailed description of earwax, which is a major plot point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29415036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beth_Harker/pseuds/Beth%20Harker
Summary: Christine becomes distracted in class, and her mind wanders.  Pre-canon.
Relationships: Christine Canigula/Jake Dillinger, Christine Canigula/Jeremy Heere
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Distracted

Sometimes Christine blanks out during class and does things she considers dumb, which is saying a lot, because she thinks of herself as a _glorious_ mess, rather enjoying her status as a unique and stunning disaster child. 

She’s in physics. Mr. Stevens, who often goes off-topic to tell engaging stories about his dead dog Woofy, is unfortunately not doing that. He’s instead saying something to the tune of bla bla bla bla bla physics Math Gravity math stars. Christine’s ear itches like mad. She rubs it. Hopefully she doesn’t have swimmers’ ear. She had that once as a little girl, and the pain had just about made her want to go full on Vincent Van Gogh. Christine wants to stand on her desk and announce to the world that her ear has become infected from swimming and she needs to vacate the school immediately. 

...Only Christine hasn’t been swimming in like forever. 

... And she knows better than to stand on desks.

... (usually)

Christine hasn’t been swimming in forever. She has, however, taken several showers, and her dads always complain that she showers for too long. Could that have resulted in a diabolical case of swimmers’ ear? Will she need antibiotics? It hurts like heck, but it didn’t start hurting until she got bored. Boredom, for Christine, is a kind of physical pain. 

Christine scratches her ear, then sticks her finger in it. She twists the finger in a circle, extracting a sticky glob of brown wax, which she wipes it in her notebook, examining the smear it leaves on the page. Oddly satisfying! Win! She repeats the process, dragging the new chunk of wax over the old one to make an X. She’d like to look at it under a microscope, but since she doesn’t have one on hand, she leans down so that her nose is almost touching the paper. Now she can see all of the little specks and spots where the wax is thicker. 

Somebody is snickering at her. Chloe Valentine. Christine sits up abruptly, heart racing. She’s not quite sure if it’s embarrassment or anger. It’s not like Christine was doing anything wrong. It’s not like she was hurting anybody. 

Chloe elbows Jake and points at Christine, whispering something in his ear. Jake doesn’t laugh, but he keeps his eyes fixed on Christine so long that she feels a new determination to go back to examining her own ear wax just to forget that he’s leering at her. 

_I have to remember never to do anything like this again! It’s gross!_ Christine thinks to herself. Her head voice is low, girly, and disgusted. 

_No!!_ insists Christine’s other head voice, which is lower and filled with bravado. _I have to remember this and never, ever make fun of anybody else for being weird in public_

The head voices are, of course, not literal. Christine only has one person in her brain, and that’s herself. It’s a personification type of deal, like devils and angels on her shoulder, only without the religion and without a clear good guy and bad guy. Both guys are morally neutral, but still need to buzz off, because maybe Christine was being kinda out there and maybe she was being kinda icky, but it just doesn’t matter. 

The bell rings. Christine grabs her backpack, and marches out, head held high. Chloe has found Jenna in the back of the classroom. They’re pointing at her and whispering something. Christine walks a little faster. 

“Hey!”

Christine winces in spite of herself, shoulders tensing. Jake places a hand on her shoulder. She turns around. He’s very, very, tall and smells sort of like almonds.

“You forgot this.”

Jake hands her her notebook— the very one she’d been waxifying. It’s closed, so her “art” isn’t visible, but she knows he knows it’s there.

“Thanks,” she says. She clutches the notebook to her chest like a shield. 

Jake grins down at her. “That necklace is pretty. What does it mean?”

Christine clutches it. “It says ‘No Day But Today’. It’s a quote from RENT, a sliiightly outdated Broadway musical about AIDS. You can watch it if you ever want to be depressed and happy at the same time. The composer died!”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Jake is smirking. Christine wonders if he is making fun of her in his mind. She does what she usually does when she is meets a social situation that she wants out of. She raises her book (or in this case, her notebook) up in front of her eyes, and does a quick about face. 

“Welp, studying now! Bye!” 

“Bye Christine!”

With that, Christine makes haste to get away, bumping into that one guy in her English class... Jerry? Jeremy? Either way, he makes the weirdest sound when she hits him, and this is her chance to be the opposite of Chloe Valentine. 

“Good for you!” she encourages. “Let that inner freak flag fly!” She makes a weird noise of her own, then zooms off to class, not waiting to see how he reacts.


End file.
